


Find Me

by doctorxdonna (badxwolfxrising)



Series: Earth Girls Are So Not Easy [12]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-16 16:43:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3495521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badxwolfxrising/pseuds/doctorxdonna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently, Donna has a bone to pick with the Doctor. Right now. The only problem is that he wiped her memory and took her home ages ago.  Prequel to Fancy A Cuppa?  Takes place in a different universe than the rest of my Doctor/Donna stories, in that this falls in line more with canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Me

“Oi, Spaceman! I’ve got a bone to pick with you!”

Donna’s familiar voice pierced the relative silence, startling the Doctor and causing him to whack his head on the underside of the TARDIS console where he’d been working.

“Ouch!” he exclaimed out loud, carefully ducking out from underneath the console. Still rubbing the back of his head, he considered the vision before him. And it was just that-a vision. As much as he’d like it not to be the truth, there was no possible way Donna Noble could be here in the console room right now. Donna was lost to him, like everyone eventually. 

She might as well be stuck in a parallel universe for all the good it did him-if she kept seeing him, if he kept popping up, eventually the barriers would break and she’d start to remember. And then she’d burn. So it was just best not to see her. Or at least to not let her see him. He was not above hiding in the bushes, like a common Peeping Tom, to watch her sit in the park and read a book. He’d found that out, amongst other things. For instance, yes, he absolutely would steal a pair of her knickers out of her laundry bag at the laundromat while she was getting change for the washer. He’d taken her comforter from her bedroom on the TARDIS, and had been sleeping with it himself. If you could call it sleeping. Mostly, it was just restless thrashing. That he did naked. While wrapped up in her blanket, reveling in her scent. Yeah….these were the things that sounded rather bad when he catalogued them like that.

Still, none of it explained what she was doing here right now, or why she seemed to remember who he was. He thought it highly unlikely that she could’ve been dosed with Huon particles again.

“What are you doing here, Donna?” he asked her softly, keeping his distance and resisting the impulse to sweep her into his arms and pepper her bare skin with a hundred kisses, to show her how much he’d missed her, how lost he’d been without her, how things just weren’t the same without her by his side.

“I just told you, I’ve got a bone to pick with you!” she said, squaring her hands on her hips.

“Yes, I gathered. But...you can’t be here now. So…?” he asked helplessly, spreading his arms to indicate his befuddlement.

“I’m not really here, you plum. And neither are you. But that’s not the point. You and I need to have a little chat about the way we parted. It just wasn’t right, and you know it,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him accusingly.

“Wait, what? What d’you mean we’re not really here?” he asked, still caught up in that bit of confusion.

Donna sighed in frustration, as though all this should be completely obvious and apparent to him. “What, your superior Time Lord biology hasn’t sorted it all out for you yet? You aren’t awake, Spaceman. We’re not really in the console room together, because you’re dreaming. I’m merely a reflection of your subconscious.”

“Dreaming? I slept just last week, I shouldn’t be asleep. Why am I asleep?” he asked indignantly.

Donna shrugged her shoulders. “I’m _your_ subconscious, mate. If you don’t know why, I don’t know why, either. That’s sort of how it works, innit?”

“Suppose it is, yeah,” he agreed thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “Stupid, though. I should lodge a complaint with someone about that.”

“Yeah, good luck with all of that. Be sure to send me a postcard letting me know how it all works out. But as I was saying, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. How could you let me forget you?” she spat accusingly, stabbing a finger at him for emphasis. Suddenly, the space between them didn’t seem to be nearly enough, and her finger seemed to be hovering centimeters from his face. Hadn’t they been standing much further apart just a second ago? He was sure they had, but he supposed the real problem was that he couldn’t escape himself, or the guilt that was apparently manifesting itself in this way.

“I...Donna, I did it to save your life! Would you rather I hadn’t?” he stammered.

“Bullshit. You could’ve saved me, you’re just too vain!” she retorted angrily.

“Excuse me?” he replied indignantly.

“You know it’s the truth. Same reason why you didn’t just regenerate when that Dalek shot you. Your vanity! If you hadn’t funneled that stupid regeneration energy into that stupid hand than the Metacrisis never would’ve happened in the first place!”

“Yeah but...you saved the universe. It happened that way because it had to. If it hadn’t you would’ve died and so would’ve the TARDIS,” he said warily, mindful of the headache he got when he tried to consider the alternatives.

“Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?” she asked him, pursing her lips.

“I don’t..I don’t sleep at night, not really. Don’t have to. Not usually, anyway. You know that,” he said.

“You know what I meant,” she replied, and he hung his head because he _did_ know, of course. She was actually just a figment of his own subconscious, after all.

“When Rose Tyler looked into the heart of the TARDIS, you took the time vortex out of her head and regenerated to save her. Guess I just don’t rate, huh?” she asked, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Oh, no..don’t, don’t do that,” he said with dismay. “Please don’t cry Donna, it’s not like that…”

“It most certainly is!” she insisted. “She’s happy off in the parallel universe with your duplicate, and I’m wondering around Chiswick, oblivious that I saved the universe, that I’m better than just a temp, that I’m so much more, and sad for reasons I can’t even remember. You didn’t just rob me of my memories of you, of us...you robbed me of the person I became because of you. I was better for it...and you took that from me. It’s just not fair,” she insisted tearfully. “If you weren’t so damn overeager to tie up ‘loose ends’ and avoid having to confront your own feelings for a former companion, you would’ve realized there was another way.”

He could only gape at her, finally speechless for once. What exactly was he supposed to say? She had her point. Several of them, even.

“Donna...I...I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“Damn skippy, I’m right! The only question now is what are you going to do to fix it?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her considerable cleavage. “The Metacrisis could’ve taken it out of my mind without erasing my memories, if he weren’t locked in a different universe. Might’ve even made him whole, too. Guess we’ll never know now. And yes, before you say it, I know-it’s a brilliant idea. Too bad that ship has sailed, quite literally. If only you were half as smart as I was when I was both of us.”

“I’ll think of something,” he assured her, and essentially, himself. “I have to. I can’t keep going on without you...I’m on a downwards spiral towards nothing good. I keep telling myself I haven’t taken on a new companion because I’m afraid of losing them, too, but really it’s because I can’t bare to see anyone else standing there next to me besides you. It would just be too much,” he said, his voice breaking. He swore the corner of her mouth quirked up a bit at that admission.

“Please. You have to save me from that dull life with that dull man. He’s a nice enough sort, I suppose-for a human, as you’d say. But he’s not you. And I belong with you, we both know that. I found you again after walking away once, now it’s your turn to find me. I miss us, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, of course. Course I do. Course I miss us,” he stammered. “But I mostly just miss you.”

“So then find me, Doctor. Find me and bring me home,” she said simply. He started to reach out to her, but his fingers hit only air. She’d begun to disappear.

“Donna!” he cried.

But she was gone, and the console room was shattering apart.


End file.
